A software package sold by a manufacturer or a sales company has plenty of preprogrammed functions, and advantageous features serve as appeal points of the package at the time of sales. The appeal points are advertised via the media such as TV commercials, magazines, catalogs, etc., or explained by salespeople, and generally a user makes a decision which product to buy based on such information.
There are several methods for explaining functions available in a software package, such as (1) a method for displaying an explanation on a display, etc. when the software package is installed or activated, and (2) a method for preparing an explanation as a help function.
In the former method, an installing program or a activating program of the software package is programmed so as to automatically display the help file, etc., when the software package is installed or activated. Information to be displayed is, as will be mentioned later, a part of the content prepared as a help file, or the content prepared separately.
In the latter method, the help function is prepared so as to quickly respond to a user's question. The function is provided so that, for example, when a user desires to know how to use a certain function, the user opens a help file and performs a keyword search, etc. as necessary so as to obtain desired information.
However, although a user takes various available functions into consideration when buying a product, it is general that the user uses only specific functions among the various functions. The user seldom uses all the available functions after the purchase, rather, functions not used would be more than functions used. Especially, after a certain period of time after the purchase, it can be said that most of the functions which have not been used will not be used.
Meanwhile, it is meaningful for a manufacturer to obtain information on usage conditions of functions provided to a product after the sales. That is, each of the functions is provided to a product for a certain purpose, but these functions, regarded as seeds, do not always fit the needs of users, and might result in being useless. Since considerable effort has been put into software development, and development cost and time have been allocated for providing functions to a product, it is required to take an action such that functions not favored by users are not adopted for the next model.
However, it is difficult for a manufacturer to obtain such information after the sales. Although the manufacturer can, for example, run a follow-up survey by setting out a questionnaire, positive cooperation from users is required in such a case. Since it depends on the intention of the users, it is difficult to obtain sufficient replies from the users.
Incidentally, as a method for obtaining positive cooperation from users, a campaign activity such as providing rewards or gifts can be carried out. However, it is very difficult to carry out such a campaign activity for all the products, in terms of cost. Further, an activity for informing the campaign activity itself is also difficult to be carried out and requires additional cost.
As described, on a user's side, while he tolerated to pay for available functions when he bought a product, he rarely uses the functions effectively after the purchase. In addition, on a manufacturer's side, it has been difficult to surely obtain information on how users use the functions effectively, so the manufacturer has been failing to propose the effective use of the functions to the users.
Further, the method for displaying a file explaining functions of a software package when the software package is installed or activated is provided for giving a general explanation of the functions, and thus it is not provided for explaining only specific functions for a certain purpose by displaying the explanation of the specific functions at a specific period of time. Besides, since a user can decide whether or not to display the explanation, the explanation is not automatically displayed unless requested by the user. Moreover, the explanation is not displayed after the software package is installed, unless it is set to be displayed every time when an application program is activated. Also in this case, the explanation to be displayed is identical every time, and it is not arranged to change according to the usage conditions of the user.
Besides, the method for preparing an explanation as the help function is also a passive method, with its use completely left to the intention of the user, and is never used unless the user takes an action to use it.
In this manner, the user does not notice that the software package he uses has useful functions, and the manufacturer cannot obtain information on whether respective functions provided to the software package are actually of utility value or not. Therefore, the manufacturer fails to effectively provide users with functions having utility value for the users.